Published by Douglas Messerli, the World Cinema Review features full-length reviews on film from the beginning of the industry to the present day, but the primary focus is on films of intelligence and cinematic quality, with an eye to exposing its readers to the best works in international film history.

Carol Reed | Night Train to Munich

Carol Reed’s
film Night Train to Munich (1940)
shares much in common with Hitchcock’s The
Lady Vanishes released two years earlier. Indeed it shares some of the same
authors, some of the same actors (Margaret Lockwood and the cricket enthusiasts
Charters and Caldicott [Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne]), a long train ride
through a politically hostile territory, and focus on British spies. Both films
also share the genres of adventure and comedy.

Yet Reed’s film, poised on the days just
before Britain declared war on Germany, is far darker and more complex and,
except for the presence of the great Dame May Whitty, is far better acted and
realized. Yet some critics of the day were quite brutal about the similarities,
dismissing (as did Michael Wood) the latter as an “ironic remake,” or, as even
the publicity for the second film proclaimed, describing Night Train to Munich as a “sequel.” And until Criterion’s release
this year, the film has been seldom seen.

Reed’s film expands the rather rickety,
long train ride wherein the “lady” of Hitchcock’s title, Miss Froy, vanishes
from sight, into a much more menacing series of events, including a hurried
escape from Prague, as it is over-run by Nazi troops, by metallurgist Axel
Bomasch (James Harcourt), imprisonment in a concentration camp for his daughter
Anna (Margaret Lockwood), and her and another internee, Karl Marsen’s (Paul von
Henreid) escape back to England in its first several frames.

Their escape, moreover, is an elaborate
hoax, staged by the Nazis in order that Bomasch’s daughter might lead them to
her father, the Henreid character actually being a Nazi Captain with whom Anna
has now developed a relationship. Through Marsen’s suggestion, Anna posts an ad
in the newspaper announcing, through a family nickname, that she is now in
England; and an anonymous phone call leads her to the singing hall of Gus
Bennett (Rex Harrison), who while
pretending to be a carefree singer is actually, as Dickie Randall, a secret
agent for the British ministry.

Anna does reconnect with her father at
Bennett’s place, but is followed by Marsen and his men, and, taken aboard a
German U-boat and shipped off to Berlin, where Bomasch is threatened, if he
does reveal his secret formula for highly protective metal coating—perfect for
German armored tanks—with Anna’s return to a concentration camp.

Bennett/Dickie Randall, having survived
the attacks of the German spies, is now determined to travel to Germany and,
somehow, bring the Bomaschs back to England. How is never explained, but he is,
evidently, fluent in German and can bluff his way into the major headquarters
as a German officer, where he quickly makes connection, once again, with Anna
and her father.

Pretending to once have had an affair with
her in the Sudetenland, he convinces Marsen and others that he will be able to
gain her confidence and compliance, leading them to the father’s secret.

The only hitch, and, yes, there’s always a
hitch, is that Hitler orders the Bomaschs immediately to Munich; hence the
title. Fortunately, Dickie is allowed to accompany them on this frightening
voyage, making up a plan of escape en
route. The only problem is that the crazed cricket-goers, traveling on the
same train, recognize Dickie as a former classmate, unintentionally alerting
the Nazi Captain to his true identity. Overhearing
the Nazi’s call to headquarters, the silly duo finally come to see their duty,
warming Dickie and helping him to overcome the Nazi guards.

Reaching Munich, Dickie and his charges
catch a car manned by a sympathetic German spy and race to the Swiss border,
catching a ski-lift gondola into freedom, gunshots being exchanged along the
way.

If this all sounds a bit complex and
slightly preposterous, that is just my point. This isn’t the simple train ride
hide-and-seek of Hitchcock’s witty “prequel.” Reed’s work is a highly complex
thriller that delights in its various twists and turns, not just of plot, but
of language as well.

Nearly everybody in the film says one
thing while meaning quite another. The slightly whiny-voiced Dickie (given
Harrison’s usual slightly peeved pitch of voice) successfully pretends to be not
only a Nazi, but a great lover; Anna is asked to show her love for him, affectionately cooing over a man we can never imagine
her ever coming to love (as she observes to him: “You know, if a
woman ever loved you like you love yourself, it would be one of the great
romances of history!”); Marsen is a more suitable lover even if he is a Nazi
liar and determined murderer; and the rather bumbling elder Bomasch, who seems
slightly out of the loop with reality, finally does very much perceive the
situation. Even the absurd comic pair of Charters and Caldicott suddenly comes
alive as British defenders, doing their duty and then some.

Early on, a Nazi officer calls to task a
fellow worker for declaring that, given the current bureaucratic conditions,
“This is a fine country to live in.” But the worker declares that, no, he had
declared it to be “a fine country to
live in,” the emphasis being positive instead of negative.

Everything about the film, in short, is
constantly shifting. The truth simply cannot be pinned down, people and
situations not ever being what they first appear to be. No, muses the Nazi
office worker, once his underling leaves, “This is a bloody awful country to
live in.”

The “tricks” and “theatrics” of
Hitchcock’s likeable earlier film are, here, turned into far more complex
alterations in behavior and psychology, the kind of shifts in personality and
perception we witness in Reed’s later films such The Fallen Idol, The Third Man, and Our Man in Havana.

If the plot is rather creaky at times
and, often, unbelievable, it, nonetheless, is a fairly deep contemplation on
the human propensity for dualities. People in Reed’s films are never quite what
they seem to be, and are even less sure of what might be “reality."

Actually, I would argue, both Hitchcock
and Reed were more influenced by their times than by each other. The same
month, August, that Reed released his film in the United Kingdom, Hitchcock
released a movie in the US far more similar to Reed’s work, Foreign Correspondent, than had been The Lady Vanishes. In 1940 it had
suddenly become a world where a little old lady’s memory of a song could no
longer save the planet.